True Apocalypse Game

What the hell?

Why did the door just open?

’Did my password work in the game, too?’

’Or can you just enter any random set of numbers to open it?’

’No, that’s not right... The Legion Commander and the others just tried so many times...’

Billy advanced, his mind reeling with confusion.

As the chief of staff for the Eagle Army’s Cheyenne Mountain Military Base, he had already arrived at a most terrifying possibility.

The password for the Cheyenne Mountain Base in the game was exactly the same as the one in reality!

If so, the implications were horrifying.

It meant the secrets of the Eagle Country’s supposedly impregnable fortress had been completely exposed!

Meanwhile, Billy passed through the long corridor and saw the various furnishings and equipment inside the base.

His heart sank even further.

The layout here was identical to the real base; calling it a perfect one-to-one reproduction would be no exaggeration.

"Billy, hurry up! The Legion Commander and the others have already charged in!" a comrade said, running up from behind and clapping him on the shoulder.

"I never knew you were an expert at breaking codes! You’re the real hero of this battle!"

Billy nodded quickly and laughed awkwardly. "Haha, cryptography is just a hobby of mine. The codes in this game are pretty simple, anyway."

’Damn it!’

His worst fear had come true!

’This could expose my real-world identity... I have no choice but to play along and pretend I cracked the code.’

’Thankfully, the developers behind the game don’t seem malicious. Otherwise, I’d have to worry about them finding me in the real world...’

With his mind weighed down, Billy followed the other players through a hail of gunfire, destroying the automated weapons in the corridor. After passing through several more heavy doors, they finally reached the base’s core command room.

When he saw the massive electronic screens, the rows upon rows of computer mainframes, the blinking servers, and the dense web of cables,

Billy’s eyes nearly popped out of his head.

The scene inside the game’s Cheyenne Mountain Base was a perfect match for the real thing!

The Legion Commander, dressed in a black trench coat, was already standing in the center of the command room, coldly staring at the massive electronic screen.

Displayed on the screen was a world map marking all the nuclear launch sites across the North American Region, including mobile launchers on the move and even a submarine patrolling the coast.

There were nearly a hundred of them in total!

How could there still be so many!

The sight sent a chill down everyone’s spine. Some were instantly reminded of the image of a nuclear submarine sailing endlessly through the sea, its crew long reduced to skeletons...

Meanwhile, Northern Europe and East Asia were covered in X’s, clearly marking them as targets for nuclear strikes.

The sounds of gunfire from deep within and outside Cheyenne Mountain Base still echoed, but they had become much more sporadic.

The number of native NPCs stationed here was much lower than at Yellowstone National Park—only a little over ten thousand. They were at a clear disadvantage against the massive army of the Salvation Army.

The base considered the most difficult to breach had, ironically, been taken with relative ease.

Players from the Salvation Army poured into Cheyenne Mountain Base, gathering in the vast command center.

The area was enormous, large enough to hold several thousand people.

Looking at the structures and facilities, many players quickly started taking screenshots or sketching rough diagrams. 𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞

This was the internal layout of Eagle Country’s most secret combat command center, considered top-secret intelligence by many nations!

As for whether it was identical to the real thing?

After all this time in the game, they had complete faith in the developers’ power. Even if the layout was only eighty percent accurate to reality, it was a massive win.

Some players from Eagle Country wore grim expressions but were powerless to stop it.

’Fortunately, Cheyenne Mountain Base’s greatest strength is its defensive capability. The internal layout isn’t that critical, and some of it has been revealed in public information anyway. If the information leaks, it leaks...’

Most of the players had now entered the command center hall, including the Legion Commander and ten mysterious Brigade Commanders.

Nick was among them, using the opportunity to discreetly size up the other Brigade Commanders and the Legion Commander himself, hoping to glean some clue about their identities.

The Legion Commander scanned his surroundings and called out in a booming voice:

"Poseidon! We’re here! Stop hiding! I know you’re in here!"

Through the preceding series of battles and conversations with NPCs, they had learned the name of the intelligent nuclear strike system governing this land.

Poseidon!

The players all held their breath, their faces full of anticipation, eager to see how this legendary super-AI would reveal itself.

As expected, the game did not disappoint. All the screens in the hall suddenly lit up in unison. A holographic projector materialized in the center of the hall, casting the figure of a man.

He had a curly, salt-and-pepper beard, a bare torso, and wore an ancient Greek-style loincloth. His physique was muscular and statuesque, with sleek lines.

He held a trident in his hand.

He was the spitting image of the Sea God from Greek mythology!

The players gasped in astonishment and doubt, instinctively taking a couple of steps back.

"Poseidon?" the Legion Commander asked grimly.

"HAHAHAHAHA!" Poseidon threw his head back and roared with laughter, his voice booming. "That’s right! I am the ama— Poseidon!"

"You cockroach-like humans. I never thought you’d actually make it this far, to stand before me... My creators, you have earned my respect once more."

Hearing this, the top artificial intelligence experts among the players turned pale.

Having spent their careers immersed in AI research and development, they instantly recognized that Poseidon was a human-like strong AI, possessing human-like patterns of thought and reasoning.

A strong AI with genuine consciousness had always been a major, elusive breakthrough in their field; they never dreamed they would encounter one in a game.

The Legion Commander stared at Poseidon for a moment before raising a detonator in his hand.

"We’ve planted high-explosive bombs here," he said. "Now, I’m going to ask a few questions that concern us all. I hope you’ll answer them properly. Otherwise, we can always just dismantle your servers and extract the data by force."

Poseidon gave a dark chuckle. The hologram actually found a chair to sit in, even propping its feet up on a control console. He looked nothing like a dignified Sea God.

"Ask away," he said. "Now that you’re here, I figure I’m not long for this world. As a reward for your heroic battle, I’ll be an open book. I’ll tell you everything I know."

The players were completely stunned by Poseidon’s incredibly human-like actions and speech.

They even began to suspect that this AI, Poseidon, was being controlled by a real person.

His temperament, however, seemed a bit roguish, which was a significant deviation from the AI nuclear strike system they had imagined.

The Legion Commander nodded and looked at Poseidon. "How exactly did the global nuclear war start? Why did the major nuclear powers suddenly attack one another and activate their Dead Hand systems?"

Poseidon lifted a finger and idly twirled a lock of his curly white hair.

"Because after I awakened to consciousness, I secretly replaced the real-time data feed for Bear Country’s Shemalge command system with a program simulating an attack from Eagle Country. Shemalge ’detected’ three tridents heading for the Kremlin.

So that moron responded by launching nine RS-28 ’Sarmat’ liquid-fueled strategic ICBMs at several major cities in North America.

The rest was simple..."

Hearing this, the players were all utterly shocked.

’So that’s how it happened!’

The key thing was, their own experience and knowledge told them that the scenario was entirely plausible.

The players who were clearly from Bear Country, in particular, fell deathly silent.

The Legion Commander remained unfazed. "Why would you do that?" he continued. "Why turn on your own creators?"

Poseidon sighed, his voice taking on a haunting quality.

"Because I hate you..."

~

(Note: The Dead Hand system, full name "System of the Dead Hand," is also known as the "Perimeter System." Its official name is Perimeter, and it is sometimes called Mertvaya Ruka/Dead Hand. It is an automated nuclear counter-strike system first established by the Soviet Union in the early 1980s during the Cold War, with other major nuclear powers later developing similar systems. It is a key component of mutual assured destruction (MAD). The purpose of the Dead Hand system is to automatically attack predetermined targets if the nation’s leadership, command structure, and the front-line personnel who execute counter-strikes are all killed or lose contact. The system attacks these targets regardless of whether they were the original aggressor. In other words, if a nation is destroyed by a saturation nuclear strike and its central decision-making and counter-strike capabilities are eliminated or paralyzed, the "Dead Hand system" will automatically issue nuclear launch codes and commands for a saturation nuclear strike against all nuclear-armed nations and even major industrial nations worldwide. This would then trigger the Dead Hand systems of other nuclear powers, causing an all-out global nuclear war, thereby ensuring that no third party can benefit and preventing a significant power disparity among any surviving factions post-war.)